"The parliament building has been seized and hostages taken," a local interior ministry official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said an unspecified number of guards at the parliament in the Chechen capital Grozny had been killed and an aide to the speaker had been wounded.

The Interfax news agency quoted a security source as saying that all the militants involved were killed by security forces but this has yet to be confirmed.

The RIA Novosti news agency reported that a suicide bomber had also blown himself up in the grounds of the parliament at the start of the incident, killing two people.

The ITAR-TASS news agency said that several militants had stormed the parliament building at 0500 GMT and that shooting was continuing inside. Interfax said between three and four militants had seized the building and shooting continued but there had not been any explosions.

"At the moment the shooting is continuing and special units of interior ministry troops, riot police and the Chechen presidential security service are arriving at the building," a security source told Interfax.

It said that according to some sources there had been shooting in the office of the parliament speaker.

Interfax said parliamentary speaker Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov had been evacuated from the parliament building in an armoured vehicle and had not been hurt. It said three security guards had were killed in the fighting.

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, on a trip to Grozny, has been informed about the shooting, Interfax said.

The special operation was being personally led by Chechnya's Kremlin-backed strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Interfax quoted a security source as saying.

The Kremlin has been fighting insurgents in the Northern Caucasus since after the collapse of the Soviet Union, waging a war in 1994-1996 against separatist rebels in Chechnya.

However, after a second war broke out in Chechnya in 1999, the rebellion's inspiration moved towards Islam with the aim of imposing an Islamic state in the region. Although the war ended in 2000, rebels have waged an increasingly deadly insurgency with unrest spreading into other areas of the Northern Caucasus such as Dagestan and Ingushetia. Chechnya has in the past years seen a relative improvement in security under its strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov although attacks remain a common occurrence.

But Kadyrov, himself an ex-rebel, has been heavily criticised for his tough tactics by rights groups, who accuse him of torture and using his own personal forces to crack down on critics.

Russia remains on high alert for militant attacks after the double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29 killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

Over 330 people were killed in Russia's most shocking hostage tragedy in 2004 when Chechen militants stormed a school in the town of Beslan in the Northern Cacuasus region of North Ossetia.

Police in Russiaâ€™s Chechnya have killed all the terrorists who attacked the republicâ€™s parliament on Tuesday morning, an Interior Ministry official saidThe deputy head of the republicâ€™s Interior Ministry, Roman Edilov, said four militants and two police officers had died during the operation.He also dismissed reports that the militants had taken hostages.The attack began when a vehicle carrying terrorists drove in with cars carrying lawmakers, a police source told RIA Novosti earlier.

He added that a suicide bomber had blown himself up while the other militants headed toward parliament.Parliament was evacuated and a special operation, headed by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was launched to flush out the militants.This is the second serious terrorist incident in Chechnya in recent months. In August, a suicide squad launched a massive attack on Kadyrovâ€™s home village of Tsentroi.Chechnya, which saw two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, has seen relative calm in recent years under Kadyrov, a former militant turned Kremlin ally whom critics have accused of human rights abuses.